Amerihost Inn And Suites Fontana

Orientation Experience with KLLM

by atufft

I went through orientation at KLLM's Fontana Truck Terminal. Since I had previously only driven 300 miles in a truck school's big rig, I was really worried that I might not perform well in the driving of the newer and larger KLLM rig. We spend most of our time filling out forms and talking about safety issues over these are huge killing machines. I enjoyed working with the guys at the Fontana terminal.

Busiest Trucker Town on the West Coast

by atufft

"Truck Terminals, Sales, and Trucker Services"

Fontana is one of many suburb cities on I-10, just east of LA and inside the San Bernadino County line. This is not the sort of city that a tourist seeks after, but it does have a lot of visitors. The terminals and training facilities for nearly all of the nation's largest truck companies are located here, as well as the sales and repair facilities for the major truck manufacturers. Swift, Schneider, JB Hunt, KLLM, and many, many more large, midsized, small, and owner operator companies are located in Fontana. Volvo, Peterbuilt, Freightliner, and Mack truck, new and used sales, and repair facilities have a heavy supporting presence in Fontana, as does Union Pacific Railroad and a whole host of distributional facilities. No doubt Fontana plays a large role in transporting to the nation goods manufactured in China and shipped to the Long Beach seaport. LA is also one of the largest manufacturing centers in the United States, and a huge home of consumers, so Fontana is also in a position to truck goods between LA and the entire United States.

"Three Days in Training"

After teaching since the mid 1980's, I finally decided that I no longer liked being a part of the Community College system. I've enjoyed teaching but the working conditions aren't very good for an adjunct instructor at these institutions. In the often quoted words of the Invisible Adjunct* blogger capture the sentiment fairly well: "Where 2/3 of the workers are deemed incompetent, what does that say about the institution that employs them?" So, I decided to do something radically different to make a buck and keep my household going. Something compatible with my insane need to travel, but still relatively close to home, and most of all something that didn't require a lot of extra training. So, I decided to become a truck driver. After 6 weeks of basic training with a truck school, I got hired with KLLM, a midsized trucking company that routes tractors with refrigerator trailers throughout the entire lower 48 US states and southern Canada. They sent me to Fontana by Greyhound bus, and so I spent three days in orientation at the company's west coast terminal.